The author of this Instructables will receive a trip to the June 2009 RoboGames in San Francisco, CA! Includes airfare for one from anywhere within the continental US, 4 nights in a hotel near the event, and VIP access/entry fees.

I'll make sure to take lotsa vids and pics to share for everyone. I guess ERP is now entering another contest, just got to finish all the upgrades . . .

I've been working on ERP again lately. Since in the long term I want it to play fetch with me, I figured I should test out simple grab and throw capabilities. See demo video below.

I also upgraded the arm software using my SoR Biped Engine. It no longer does ultra-fast servo-breaking ninja moves, but smooth tai chi style movements. It might take me awhile before I upgrade a video on that . . . the next step would be to get the camera to track *and* move the arm to grab the ball wherever it is.

This is a 3D scanning and mapping test for my ERP. Its basically mapping obstacles, then choosing the most free path. It scans in only 30 points, so its fairly poor resolution. It's only the first step for a more advanced algorithm in the future.

That wire rapping stuff is really useful! Our team was able to get a large roll of it from one of our sponsors, It turned a huge robot of wires everywhere and made it nice and neat!! but when the competition came, we where way overweight so we where forced to use zip ties.

I would reccomend this rap to anyone who has a robot with loose wires everywhere!! It is a must have

-Kyle

Logged

some people are just Born smart, but some people have to work for it, and those are the people who succeed.

Why do you take so many samples on the same position?I mean, I think I know the answer but sensor passes through the same spot several times and the overall performance is slow. Area scanners are pretty slow, even the URG I got last year(search the forum for the pictures) was pretty lazy(500ms per full scan). I know Admins device is still a prototype and it is supposed to be slow, but I cant understand the reason you go back to the same spot and scan it again. It is just way too slow(sorry if I sound rude, I dont mean it).

I dont know what are you trying to do, but I think taking several samples and then you take the mean(or some other filtering procedure). If that is the case then why dont you take saveral samplings at once and the move to the next position. After you got the readings for all the positions, the robot moves. No repeating. Usually ucontrollers can sample at the order of MSPS, so that should'n be a problem. That is how the original URG I've go does its job at least.

BTW, since you are building your on area scanner, I think I gonna post the drawings for my own are scanner. After I've got my URG, I reversed engineered it and desing a (much) cheaper, but unfortunatelly, not as precise version using several SHARP PSD sensors, unfortunatelly I havent got time to build it but I would be interested to see if my concepts can be useful for anything. I will post it during the weekend when I am back home.

But anyway, this was only a test for a more advanced algorithm. Ideally ERP won't stop moving, and the scanning will be continuous. 3D scanning is slow, so it'll only occasionally do broad sweeps, then focus only on close objects for high accuracy scans. Its a bit tricky to create 3D maps as the robot is moving! I also need to figure out nicer ways to store and reuse old mapped scans.

Also, currently it scans only from left to right. I was too lazy to have it scan from right to left (during the return motion). That'll be for the next upgrade!

I think I'm going to add GPS on ERP soon. I found a rooftop parking lot with few cars perfect for it

Another RoboGames 2009 video, with ERP making friends. Unlike what you see in the video, most children decided that grabbing ERP, jumping over him, driving other robots into him, or attempting to remove the camera were all good ideas.

One mother decided to let her 1 year old chase it for 10 minutes . . . ERP was just slightly faster . . .

luckily I had replacement servo parts when it got run over . . . anyway, enjoy the vid!

Lem from robots-dreams came over to check out ERP during RoboGames '09, so I gave him a demo. You'll see ERP grabbing/throwing stuff, and trying not to drive off the table. About 5% of the time he would, so not perfect yet!